So: Stein is a sneering jerk. And there's no need to be defensive about anything you read. But it isn't sneering to say that Pynchon and Wallace are attempting to do something different from Collins. (And it should be possible to talk about what's great about them, or Heartfelt Character, etc. without it being seen as name dropping). The best short story I've read in the last couple of years ("Memory Wall," by Anthony Doerr) is straight-up scifi. But it attempts and succeeds to say something about the human condition that, say, Neal Stephenson never goes for in thousands of pages (and I've read every page). Because Stephenson is writing what I would call pulp, which is to say a plot-driven work that doesn't attempt to do anything more than tell a story. (That is a very quick and provisional definition and if it seems to be sneering I don't mean it to be). There's nothing wrong with pulp! And I don't feel like reading Stephenson (or Collins) is a guilty pleasure--it's a pleasure. But there is a difference in the goal of that kind of work, and you don't have to rank one higher than the other to see that difference. That is different from saying one thing is "good for you" and one isn't. Your tone seems to me to be a little sneering about Pynchon and Wallace (neither of whom has never written, for example, the Heartfelt Character Study of Thirtysomethings in Modern Society of the moment).

Also, it seems to me that the applying the pigeonhole principle to sales figures pretty clearly demonstrates that those people who read *only* pulp do exist. It can and should be suggested that those people might enjoy works with different goals on occasion; it should be possible to do this by praising the good, not shaming people. For instance, have I mentioned that "Memory Wall" is fucking fantastic? Or "The Zero Meter Diving Team," Jim Shepard's story about Chernobyl? Because I would personally love it if works like that were part of the culture the way "The Hunger Games" is.